Interview by Louise Nousratpour
Friday November 6, 2009
The Morning Star
Sitting in the cosy study of her modest home in the heart of Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in Britain, talking animatedly with mug of coffee in one hand, fag in the other, Anita Halpin does not fit the caricature of the dull union bureaucrat, abstracted from the lives of ordinary people.
Though she has held, and still holds, many senior positions in the trade union movement and the Communist Party, she proudly describes herself as a lay activist and explains that her decision to stand down from the general council this year is to spend more time with her local union and party branch.
"I'm seeking nomination as NUJ delegate to the next TUC congress. It will be nice to be back on the conference floor," she smiles, revealing that it's been 20 years since she was a first-time delegate.
At this year's TUC congress Halpin won a prestigious gold badge for services to the trade union movement, an achievement which she is typically modest about.
"I have to take it to the jeweller because it is designed for men. It has a stickpin for ties," she says, encapsulating the prejudice that she has had to contend with in order to receive the award.
Halpin became the third woman president of the NUJ in 1994, when the rest of the executive were all male. And she is the only woman treasurer in the union's 100-year history.
But her election in 2001 was no token gesture to gender equality. She has turned round the union's dire finances in the past decade "from an overdraft of £3 million to a subscription income of £3 million," she declares proudly.
Little wonder she has just been re-elected as treasurer.
Though progress has been made to shake off the "male, pale and stale" image, the movement is still far from being truly representative of women and minority workers who are often the lowest paid and most likely to suffer discrimination.
Halpin is particularly excited about TUC equality conferences - LGBT, women, and disability - now being motion-based and she hopes the young members' forum will soon be given the same democratic right.
"This provides lay activists with a greater democratic voice and has boosted representation. It is their voice that should be heard, not only the men in grey suits whose speech are written by, presumably, NUJ members working in some communication office somewhere."
One of the greatest gains of recent years, the minimum wage, was first adopted by the sisters at a TUC women's conference some years before Labour made it law in 1999, Halpin notes.
"That was in response to Thatcher's decision to close the wages council which regulated low-paid industries.
"I wasn't attending TUC women's conference then, but the evolution of the arguments must have come from discussions around how to protect low-paid workers, who are mainly women," Halpin observes.
She regrets some sisters' tendency to shy away from accepting nominations and thereby achieve progressive change.
"Many fewer women accept nominations to union positions than men do - if for no other reason it has to be a problem of confidence and feeling 'I can make a difference.'
"Women have an equal right to be nominated and they should exercise that right by equally accepting that nomination."
Halpin believes that a truly representative movement is crucial to win the fight against voter apathy and the fascist menace.
The work, she insists, must start at grass-roots level, using the straightforward, progressive policies outlined in the People's Charter - now TUC policy - and the Charter for Women.
"Abstention is a very dangerous thing. That is how the BNP got votes in the north-west - they polled fewer votes than the previous election," Halpin notes, adding: "We must build our local trade councils as well as party and union branches."
Reaffirming her confidence in the electoral strategy outlined in the Communist Party of Britain manifesto, the British Road For Socialism, Halpin is crystal clear that the trade union movement must pull out all the stops for a Labour victory at the looming election.
The Thatcher years, she remembers grimly, "knocked the guts out of a whole generation of workers.
"Following Lenin, the British Road to Socialism acknowledges the special relationship between the trade union movement and Labour, albeit a social democratic party or even worse than that now."
Halpin is well aware that many recoil at the thought of voting for a warmongering government. For her, the Labour Party is not sacrosanct or above criticism but it is simply where the bulk of the organised workers are politically represented.
A new workers' party, she believes, could only emerge from "the trade union movement, whatever the evolutionary solution is going to be.
"Disaffiliating lock, stock and barrel from Labour would just cut the ground from under our feet."
Ultimately, she says, "an artificially constructed left coalition without a groundswell of trade union support" will get nowhere.
Halpin believes that, in the first instance, unions must use the power of their affiliation fee "much more radically."
This, she argues, can be done through the trade union parliamentary co-ordinating group, launched at the TUC last year and including affiliated and non-affiliated unions.
"I don't like this 'them and us' situation. We can overcome this division through the TUPCG, which provides a co-ordinated lobbying voice within Westminster."
Halpin is respected even by those on the right for her unstinting commitment to the working class and her consistent internationalism.
She believes that the labour movement must overcome its fear of being branded anti-semitic and adopt an unequivocal position on the festering injustice that is occupied Palestine.
No-one can accuse her of being anti-Jewish. Her grandparents Alfred and Tekla Hess were persecuted by the nazis and were forced to emigrate to England in 1938.
Halpin describes her early politics as "instinctively anti-fascist" due to her father Hans making a conscious decision to relay the family's tragic history to his young daughter.
"I learned my politics from my parents," she explains. "They were anti-fascist refugees from nazi Germany. Most refugees decided to assimilate and not tell their offspring anything about the history. Maybe because it was just too horrendous.
"But my father, a Marxist art historian, was sufficiently political to think it was his duty to tell me what had happened."
Today a new generation of activists faces the same fascist menace in a new suit.
At a time when the Establishment parades Nick Griffin's ugly politics on our screens in the name of "freedom of speech," the working-class movement cannot afford to be divided or ignore the issues which give rise to fascism.
This threat needs to be countered and it's up to people on the left to adopt some of Halpin's enthusiasm and build the confidence that they can make a difference after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment